3 Breathing Techniques You Should Try

It suffices to say that exercise is one of the most important things for your health. Taking care of your body can help you in countless ways, but most importantly, it keeps you healthy both physically and mentally and it can help you with quite a lot of issues. One of the most common exercises all around the world is most definitely running, but if you’re new to it, you may face some common problems which can make it harder for you to achieve your goals. We did a bit of digging around and we’ve made this short guide through some breathing techniques and exercises that should help you along your way. So, let’s dive in and see how to avoid common issues most new runners face when they exercise.

Breathing Control

There are quite a lot of people who have problems with breathing, especially when running, but most of those problems come from the lack of breathing control. For example – rhythmic breathing while running has proven to be more than successful in various ways. Yoga teaches that with breathing control you get to fully control your body, and that’s why you need to train to breathe in such a way so you’re not distracted by breathing while running. In order to breathe properly, you must focus more on your “belly breathing” rather than focusing on “chest breathing”. Perhaps this sounds a bit counterintuitive, but it’s really the cause of the most breathing problems for runners, especially new, inexperienced ones.

Breathing Muscles Training

When you’re “chest breathing”, you breathe shallow and you don’t bring in the maximal oxygen, and when you’re exhaling, you don’t fully expel your lungs, which in turn make you experience side stitches. Luckily, there are some things you can do to focus more on the “belly breathing” with your diaphragm and master these breathing techniques.

One of the easiest breathing training is quite easy. You should lay down on your back and breathe very deep so that your belly elevates with your chest while you inhale, and lowers when you exhale. You will notice that your chest elevates with your belly, and you will feel your belly muscles contracting with breathing. What you need to do is breathe until your chest doesn’t move when inhaling and exhaling, while your belly does. Once you feel confident enough – move to the upright position and keep practising.

Breathing Rhythm

Your breathing rhythm depends on how hard you’re running. It depends on the number of steps you take before breathing in and out. For example, a 2:2 rhythm means you take two steps while breathing in and two steps when breathing out. For easier runs, 3:3 rhythm gives the best results, but if it’s hard for you, you slowly work up to it. For moderate runs, 2:2 rhythm is the best, while you should try to do 1:2 rhythm when you’re doing hard workouts and races.

Sometimes you simply can’t master all of these techniques because of some problem you have, that you are not even aware of. We talked to the experienced rhinoplasty expert Dr. Turner and he explained that quite a lot of people are faced with problems like a deviated septum, runny nose, and other similar issues, and they don’t even know it. The procedures that fix those problems are very easy and your health can seriously benefit from them.

Final thoughts

These are just some of the breathing advice when it comes to running. These tips should help point you in the right direction. You shouldn’t focus on every breath with every step, but try to do what feels comfortable while keeping those techniques and breathing exercises in mind. Don’t overthink it, just try to do it naturally as it comes to you, and you will probably end up doing what you should.

By Helen Bradford